1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to work order management systems and, more particularly, to processes and systems for screening work orders to more quickly diagnose and resolve customer complaints.
2. Description of the Related Art
Most residential and business telephone customers are connected to telephone systems by copper cables and wires. These copper cables are the familiar one or more telephone lines running throughout nearly every home in the United States. Because copper cable and wire connects each home, and many businesses, to the telephone system, the Public Switched Telephone Network is composed of billions of copper cables and wires. Each of these copper cables must be maintained to provide superior telephone service to the customer.
Yet maintaining these copper cables and wires is an extraordinary task. The Public Switched Telephone Network, with its millions of copper cables and wires, may receive hundreds of maintenance calls per day. These maintenance calls, in turn, may result in hundreds of maintenance work orders. A single cable fault, for example, may sever telephone service to hundreds of customers. Construction crews can inadvertently severe telephone service to hundreds of customers. Storms, floods, and other natural disasters can interrupt telephone service and require thousands of man-hours of restoration. Even common, everyday exposure to ozone, summer heat, winter cold, and water can deteriorate and degrade copper cables and wires. These hundreds of daily maintenance calls, and the resultant work orders, must be efficiently managed to prevent maintenance costs from eroding profits.
Although hundreds of work orders are generated each day, quickly filtering these work orders has remained an illusive goal. Managers have no methods of automatically screening work orders to quickly diagnose and to quickly resolve problems. Once an available technician, for example, receives a week-old work order, the available technician may discover he or she was just in the vicinity of the repair yesterday or even a few days before. Screening work orders for common geographic characteristics, however, could have prevented inefficiently rolling another repair truck to the same vicinity. If, as another example, the work order describes a problem with a customer's digital subscriber line, a technician with inadequate training or inadequate equipment could initially be assigned the repair. Screening work orders, again, could identify complex problems and help assign technicians with proper training. The inability to screen work orders, however, habitually fosters inefficiencies and needlessly increases costs.
There is, accordingly, a need in the art for work order management systems that screen work orders, that efficiently utilize technician capabilities and equipment, that provide faster repair service to customers, and that reduce the costs of maintaining operations.